USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 31
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NOTES.
1Statements made to J. P. A. in 1912.
"Letter from S. J. Silver to J. P. A., dated November 18, 1912.
"Zebulon settled near French Broad River in Buncombe county, 216 miles below Ashe- ville, where the National Casket Factory is now, and died there years ago.
Bedent settled on Beaver Dam, two miles north of Asheville, at what is now the Way place, where he died in 1839. Letter of Dr. J. S. T. Baird to J. P. A., December 16, 1912. Dr. Baird died in April, 1913.
'Andrew, a brother of Zebulon and Bedent Baird, settled in Burke; but the Valle Crucis Baird did not claim descent from him John Burton was really the founder of Asheville, as on July 7, 1794, he obtained a grant for 200 acres covering what is now the center of that city. Condensed from Asheville's Centenary. He afterwards moved to Ashe County and in April, 1799, he entered 200 acres near the Virginia line. Deed Book A., p. 339.
Condensed and quoted from T. L. Clingman's' Speeches and Writings, " pp. 138, et seq. "University Magazine of 1888-89.
&Zeigler & Grosscup, p. 245.
"Letter of C. C. Duckworth to J. P. A., May 1, 1912.
10Letter from C. C. Duckworth to J. P. A., May 1, 1912; letter from D. K. Collins, June 7, 1912; statement of Hon. J. C. Pritchard, June, 1912. In " The Child That Toileth Not" (p. 448) Pickens county, S. C., is given as the one in which Redmond held forth twenty years ago, etc.
11State ». Hall, 114 N. C., p. 909.
12State v. Hall, 115 N. C., p. 811.
13For Hon. Z. B. Vance's account of the finding of Prof. Mitchell's body, see "Balsam Groves of the Grandfather Mountain," by S. M. Dugger (p. 261). In this appears a list of those who assisted in the search. From this account it seems that what is now known as Mitchell's Peak was put down in Cook's Map as Mt. Clingman. and that Prof. Mitchell insisted that he had measured it in 1844, while Gen. Clingman claimed to have been the first to measure it.
1""Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction," pp. 130-137-139.
14Ibid., p. 86.
1'Ibid., p. 74.
"'According to Herndon, Thomas set up house-keeping in Indiana with the tools and liquor he had recovered from his capsized river boat, p. 17.
17From Louisville Courier Journal, of Thursday, Novmber 9, 1911.
18" The Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother," by Carolina Hanks Hitchcock, 1889.
"Tradition as related by James D. Jenkins, Esq., recorder of Elizabethton, Tenn .. who also stated that Isaac Lincoln's wife was Sarah Stover, of Pennsylvania. Also that President Andrew Johnson had died on the Isaac Lincoln farm.
CHAPTER XII HUMOROUS AND ROMANTIC
A FAITHFUL PICTURE OF THE PAST. "Somewhere about 1830," writes Judge A. C. Avery, "my father had a summer house constructed of hewn logs, containing four rooms and a hall, with outhouses, at the place now called Plumtree. It remained till about 1909, when it was destroyed by fire. This was a mile below the 'Quarter,' where the overseer kept house and my father's sons, who successively managed the stock, stayed. There were a number of negro cabins around the Craborchard proper, which was located about half a mile from where Waightstill W. Avery now lives. My father had large meadows there, on which he raised a quantity of hay and wintered hundreds of heads of cattle that ranged on the moun- tains in summer. These mountains were the Roan and the Yellow, on whose bald summits grass grew luxuriantly.
HAYMAKING IN THE SUMMERTIME. "During August of every year, after laying by his crop in Burke county, my father took a number of negroes and several wagons and teams over to the Craborchard, and moved his family for a stay of two months or more to his summer house at Plumtree. He hired white men from all over Yancey county to help his negroes in saving the hay.
OPEN HOUSE AND GRAND FROLIC. "He kept open house at the summer place and large parties of ladies and gentlemen went out there from time to time and had a grand frolic. Many of the young people rode out on horseback, and some of the ladies in carriages. Parties were continually riding out to the Roan, the Yellow and to Linville Falls. The woods were full of deer, and all the streams were full of speckled trout that could be caught with redworm bait. So, the ladies and gentlemen fished in Toe river and its tributaries while others of the gentlemen hunted deer, often killing them near enough to the summer house for the shot to be heard."
WHERE THE BOYS WERE "HANGED." "The late James Gudger, who was brought in his early infancy to his father's residence on Swannanoa, just settled, and who, in 1830, and
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1836, represented Buncombe county in the North Carolina Senate, told his grandson, Capt. J. M. Gudger, that when he was a very small boy it was the custom to send a number of boys with bags of grain to mill to be ground, and leave it there until a month later, when the boys would return with other grain and carry back the meal ground from the first. He further said that usually a man accompanied the party to put on the sacks when they should fall from the horses, but that on one occasion as he, then a very small boy, was returning from the mill, with his companions of about the same age, the man for some reason was not along, and one of the sacks fell off on the Battery Park hill over which they had to pass; that while endeavoring in vain to replace the sacks a party of Indians came upon them, and from pure mis- chief threatened and actually began to hang them; that the boys 1 were badly frightened, but finally the Indians left them unharmed, and they went on their way, and that the hill was afterwards known through the country as 'the hill where the boys were hung.'1
HANDLEN MOUNTAIN. "He still further said that the mil- ler in charge of the mill, whose name was Handlen, undertook to cultivate a crop on the mountain on the western side of the French Broad, but as he did not return to the settlement for a long while his friends became frightened, and in a party went to the clearing, where they found him killed and scalped, and his crop destroyed, and that from this incident that moun- tain took its name of the Handlen mountain. 1
"TALKING FOR BUNCOMBE." "Famous as Buncombe de- servedly is, she has acquired some notoriety that no place less merits. Her name has become synonymous with empty talk, a lucus a non lucendo. In the sixteenth Congress of the United States the district of North Carolina which embraced Buncombe county was represented in the lower house by Felix Walker. The Missouri question was under discussion and the house, tired of speeches, wanted to come to a vote. At this time Mr. Walker secured the floor and was proceed- ing with his address, at best not very forceful or entertain- ing, when some impatient member whispered to him to sit down and let the vote be taken. This he refused to do, saying that he must 'make a speech for Buncombe,' that is, for his constituents; or, as others say, certain members rose
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and left the hall while he was speaking and, when he saw them going, he turned to those who remained and told them that they might go, too, if they wished, as he was 'only speaking for Buncombe.' The phrase was at once caught up and the vocabulary of the English language was enriched by the addition of a new term. "2
ISOLATION OF MOUNTAIN NEIGHBORHOODS. So sequestered were many of these mountain coves which lay off the main lines of travel, that persons living within only short distances of each other were as though "oceans rolled between"; as the following incident abundantly proves :
MONT. RAY'S FLIGHT, RETURN AND TRIAL.ª Soon after the Civil War Mont. Ray killed Jack Brown of Ivy, between Ivy and Burnsville, and went to Buck's tanyard, just west of Carver's gap under the Roan mountain, where he supported himself making and mending shoes till many of the most important witnesses against him had gotten beyond the juris- diction of the court-by death or removal-when he returned and stood his trial in Burnsville and was acquitted. He had never been forty miles away, had remained there twelve years; yet no one ever suspected that he was a fugitive from justice.
A FORGOTTEN BATTLE-FIELD. The Star, a newspaper pub- lished in Sparta, Alleghany county, in its issue of February 29, 1912, contained the following : "A few years ago, along New river, near the northern border of this county, was found what is believed to be indications of a battle of which no one now living has any knowledge, nor is there any tradition among our people concerning it. On the land of Squire John Gambill, near the bank of New river, after a severe rain- storm and wash-out, some white objects were noticed lying on the ground. On examination these were found to be human skulls and other parts of human skeletons. Further exami- nation revealed other marks of battle, such as leaden balls buried in old trees lying on the ground, etc. Squire Gambill's ancestors have resided in this section for one and a half cen- turies; yet, they have never heard of the occurrence, nor had they any tradition of it. Who fought this battle? Why was it fought? Was there a fort here? Was it fought between the whites and Indians?" (See ante, p. 108.)
ANDREW JACKSON LOSES A HORSE RACE. " In the late summer or early fall of 1788, Andrew Jackson and Robert
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Love had a horse race in the Greasy Cove, just above what it now Ervin, Tenn. It seems that Jackson's jockey could not ride and "Old Hickory" was forced to ride his horse him- self, while Love's jockey was on hand and rode Love's horse, winning the race. When the result was known "just for a moment there was a deep, ominous hush; then a pande- monium of noise and tumult that might have been heard in the two neighboring counties. Jackson was the chief actor in this riot of passion and frenzy. His brow was cor- rugated with wrath. His tall, sinewy form shook like an aspen leaf. His face was the livid color of the storm cloud- when it is hurling its bolts of thunder. His Irish blood was up to the boiling point, and his eyes flashed with the fire of war. He was an overflowing Vesuvius of rage, pouring the hot lava of denunciation on the Love family in general and his victorious rival in particular. Col. Love stood before this storm unblanched and unappalled-for he, too, had plenty of 'sand,' and as lightly esteemed the value of life-and an- swered burning invective with burning invective hissing with the same degree of heat and exasperation. Jackson denounced the Loves as a 'band of land pirates' because they held the ownership of nearly all the choice lands in that section. Love retorted by calling Jackson 'a damned, long, gangling, sor- rel-topped soap stick.' The exasperating offensiveness of this retort may be better understood when it is explained that in those days women 'conjured' their soap by stirring it with a long sassafras stick. The dangerous character of both men was well known, and it was ended by the interfer- ence of mutual friends, who led the enraged rivals from the grounds in different directions." 4
TWO OLD-TIME GENTLEMEN. Major O. F. Neal was a law- yer and farmer who lived in Jefferson, and who died in 1894. He and his brother Ben were punctilious on all matters of politeness. On one occasion, after a long walk, they reached a spring. Ben insisted that, as the Major was a lawyer and lived in town, he should drink first; but the Major claimed that as Ben was the elder he must drink first. As neither would yield to the other, they politely and good-naturedly refused to drink at all, and returned home more thirsty than ever.
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THE FIRST DEPARTMENT STORE. Two miles from Old Field, Ashe county, was kept from about 1870 to about 1890 the first department store known. It was kept by that en- terprising merchant Arthur D. Cole, and the large, but now empty, buildings still standing there show the extent of his business. He kept as many as twelve clerks employed, and boasted that there were but two things he did not carry con- stantly in stock, one being the grace of God and the other blue wool. A friend thought he had him "stumped" one day when he called for goose yokes; but Cole quietly took him up stairs and showed him a gross which he had had on hand for years. He and his father did more to develop the root and herb business in North Carolina than anyone else. He failed in business, after nearly twenty years of success.
A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. Zachariah Sawyer, grand- father of George Washington Sawyer, now register of deeds of Ashe county, came to Ashe from east of the Blue Ridge eighty-odd years ago. He learned that he was entitled to a share in a large estate in England and went there to collect his interest. After he had been in that country a short time he wrote home that he had succeeded in collecting his share and would soon start home. He was never afterwards heard of.
WELBURN WATERS, HERMIT HUNTER OF WHITE TOP. In a well written book, Mr. J. A. Testerman of Jefferson has drawn a striking portrait of this old-time hunter and back- woodsman. The last edition is dated 1911. From it one gathers that Waters was born on Reddy's river in Wilkes county, November 20, 1812, the son of John P. Waters, a French Huguenot, and a half-breed Catawba woman. His conversion and his distraction at a conference held at Abingdon, Va., in 1859 because he was afraid some harm would come to a new hat he had carried to church are amusingly told, while his encounters with wild beasts and his solitary life on White Top are graphically portrayed.
LOCHINVAR REDUX. "About the year 1816, John Hols- claw, a young and adventurous hunter, and a regular Loch- invar, as the sequel will show, built a bark 'shanty' on the waters of Elk at the 'Big Bottoms,' where he lived for many years. The romance of his life was that he went over to Valle Crucis, a settlement only eight miles distant, and there by sheer force of will, or love, I will not say which, carried away,
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captive, a young daughter of Col. Bedent Baird, and took her over the mountains by a route so circuitous that, from what her conductor told her, she verily believed she was in Ken- tucky. She was kept in ignorance of where she actually did live for many years, and only by accident found out better. One day she heard a bell whose tinkle seemed strangely famil- iar. She went to the steer on which it was hung and found that it belonged to her father. This clue led to the discovery that, instead of being in Kentucky she was not eight miles as the crow flies from her old home at Valle Crucis. Of course, she thanked her husband for the deception, as all women do, and they lived happy ever afterwards.
"For many years after John Holsclaw settled on the 'Big Bottoms of Elk' with his youthful bride, they lived solitary and alone; and in after years she was wont to tell how she had frightened away the wolves which prowled around when her husband was away, by thrusting firebrands at them, when they would scamper off a distance and make night hideous with their howls. And how, in after years, when they built a rude log house with only one small window to admit the light, and had moved into it, Mr. Holsclaw killed a deer and dressed it, and had gone away, a panther, smelling the fresh venison, came to the house and tried to get in, screaming with all the ferocity of a beast brought almost to the point of starvation. There was no one in the house but the woman and one child, but she bravely held her own till her husband returned, when the fierce beast was frightened away. She lived to a great age, and only a few years ago died,5 and lies buried on a beautiful hillock hard by the place of her nativ- ity, on the land now owned by one of her nephews, Mr. W. B. Baird, one time sheriff of Watauga."
WHO WAS SELLER AND WHO WAS SOLD? Col. Carson Vance lived on Rose's creek, between Alta Pass and Spruce Pine before and during and after the Civil War. He was a bright, but eccentric man. He was admitted to the bar and prac- ticed law to some extent. But he and a free negro named John Jackson made up a plot at the commencement of the Civil War whereby they were to go together to New Orleans, Vance as master and Jackson as slave. At New Orleans Jackson was to be sold for all the cash he would bring, after which Vance was to disappear. Then Jackson was to prove
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that he was a "free person of color," regain his freedom and rejoin Vance on the outskirts of New Orleans. It is said that this scheme worked successfully and that Vance and Jackson divided the proceeds of the sale.
LOVE FINDS A WAY. On the 21st of June, 1856, W. M. Blalock, commonly called Keith Blalock, and Malinda Pritch- ard were married in Caldwell county, close to the Grand- father mountain. In 1862 the conscript law of the Confed- eracy went into operation, and Keith, though a Union man, was clearly subject to conscription. There was no escape from it except by volunteering. But to do that would be to part with his wife. So they resolved to enlist together and seek their first opportunity of deserting and getting over into the Federal lines. They went to Kinston, N. C., and joined the 26th N. C. regiment, then commanded by Col. Zebulon B. Vance, soon afterwards to become governor. This was on the 12th of April, 1862. She wore a regular private's uniform and tented and messed with her husband. She en- listed and was known as Sam Blalock. She stood guard, drilled and handled her musket like a man, and no one ever suspected her sex. But they were too far from the Federal lines, with little prospect of getting nearer. So Keith went into a swamp and rubbed himself all over with poison oak. They sent him to the hospital in Kinston, where the surgeons disagreed as to his ailment, and he was returned to his own regiment, where his surgeon recommended his discharge. It was granted and he left the camp. Then his wife presented herself to Col. Vance and said that as long as they had sent her man home she wanted to go, too. An explanation fol- lowed with confirmation "strong as proof of holy writ." She was discharged. Keith joined the Union army and drew a pension. Mrs. Blalock died March 9, 1901. He was called "Keith" because when a boy he was a great fighter, and could "whip his weight in wild-cats," as the saying went. At that time there was a fighter, full grown and of great renown, who lived at Burnsville, by the name of Alfred Keith. The boys Blalock played with, "double-teamed" on him some- times, but always got thrashed. They then called him "Old Keith." He died in September, 1913, at Montezuma.
THE WILD CAT. In February, 1848, when she was sixteen years old, Mary Garland, afterwards the wife of Judge Jacob
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W. Bowman, killed a wild cat which had followed some ducks into her yard. She hemmed it in a fence corner and beat it to death with a "battling stick"-a stout, paddle-like stick used to beat clothes when they are being washed. This was on Big Rock creek, Mitchell county. Her cousins, Jane and Nancy Stanley, while tending the boiling of maple sugar sap in a camp on the waters of Big Rock creek in the spring of 1842, when sixteen and thirteen years old respectively, killed a black bear which had been attracted by the smell of sugar, by driving it into a small tree and killing it with an ax.
A MOONSHINER'S HEAVEN. Forty years ago Lost Cove was almost inaccessible, except by trails; but last year (1912) a wagon road over three miles long was constructed to it over the ridges from Poplar Station on the C. C. & O. Railroad. Such a secluded place was a great temptation to moonshiners, and when to its inaccessibility was added the fact that it was in dispute between Tennessee and North Carolina, its fascina- tions became irresistible. Accordingly John D. Tipton was accused of having begun business by the light of the moon, as was evidenced by sundry indictments in the United States court at Asheville. His example was soon followed by others; but, whenever it appeared to Judge R. P. Dick that the al- ledged stills were in the disputed territory, he directed the discharge of the defendants. However, a mighty change has taken place in Lost Cove within the past few years, and not only is there no moonshining there now, even when fair Luna is at the full, but the good people will not suffer the "critter" to be brought in from Tennessee. And better still, in 1910 they built a school house and a church, and voted a special school tax, the first school having been taught in 1911.
PEGGY'S HOLE. Three-quarters of a mile above Elk Cross Roads, now Todd, is a high bluff, covered with laurel, pines and ivy. It is at a bend of New river. About 1815 Mrs. Peggy Clauson was going to church on a bright Sunday morn- ing. Dogs had run a bear off the bluff into a deep hole at the base of a cliff, and Mrs. Clauson saw him swimming around in the water. She waded in and, seizing the brute by both ears, forced his head under the water and held it there until Bruin had drowned. It has been called Peggy's Hole ever since.
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THE HERMIT OF BALD MOUNTAIN. 6 "In Yancey county, visible from the Roan, and forty-five miles from Asheville, is a peak known as Grier's Bald, named in memory of David Grier, a hermit, who lived upon it for thirty-two years. From posthumous papers of Silas McDowell, we learn the following facts of the hermit's singular history. A native of South Caro- lina, he came into the mountains in 1798, and made his home with Colonel David Vance, whose daughter he fell in love with. His suit was not encouraged; the young lady was mar- ried to another, and Grier, with mind evidently crazed, plunged into the wilderness. This was in 1802. On reach- ing the bald summit of the peak which bears his name, he determined to erect a permanent lodge in one of the coves. He built a log house and cleared a tract of nine acres, sub- sisting in the meantime by hunting and on a portion of the $250 paid him by Colonel Vance for his late services. He was twenty miles from a habitation. For years he lived un- disturbed; then settlers began to encroach on his wild domains. In a quarrel about some of his real or imaginary landed rights, he killed a man named Holland Higgins. At the trial he was cleared on the ground of insanity, and returned home to meet death at the hands of one of Holland's friends. Grier was a man of strong mind and fair education. After killing Higgins, he published a pamphlet in justification of his act, and sold it on the streets. He left papers of interest, containing his life's record and views of life in general, showing that he was a deist, and a believer in the right of every man to take the executive power of the law into his own hands."
OLD CATALOOCHEE STORIES. Owing to the fact that the late Col. Allen T. Davidson spent much of his young man- hood hunting and fishing in Cataloochee valley, much of its early history has been preserved. From him it was learned that years ago Zach White shot a deputy sheriff named Ray- burn when Col. Davidson was a boy, and hid near a big rock in a little flat one half mile above the late Lafayette Palmer's home, where for years Neddy McFalls and Dick Clark fed him. He also stayed on Shanty branch near where Har- rison Caldwell now lives. This branch got its name from a shanty or shed that Old Smart, a slave of Mitchell David- son, built there while he tended cattle for his master years before any white people ever lived in that valley. The cattle
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ranged on the Bunk mountain and on Mount Sterling, and one day when Neddy McFalls was looking for them to salt them he could not find a trace of them anywhere. His nick- name for Col. Davidson was Twitty. Now the Round Bunk mountain stands between the lefthand fork of the Little Cataloochee and Deep Gap, while the Long branch runs from the balsam on Mount Sterling and between the headwaters of Little Cataloochee and Indian creek. It was on the Long Branch that Col. Davidson and Neddy McFalls were standing when the latter put his hands to his mouth and cried out: "Low, Dudley, low!", Dudley being the name of the bull with the herd of cattle; and almost immediately they heard Dudley from the top of Mount Sterling give a long, loud low, and they knew that their cattle were found. Richard Clark is the one who gave the name to the Bunk mountain.7 Neddy McFalls was a great believer in witchcraft. He carried a rifle that had been made by a man of the name of Gallaspie on the head of the French Broad river, while Col. Davidson's gun was known as the Aaron Price gun. Neddy missed a fair shot at a buck one day and nothing could persuade him from leav- ing Cataloochee and traveling miles to a female witch doctor who was to take the "spell" off his gun. Jim Price was found dead of milk sick west of the "Purchase, " formerly the home of John L. Ferguson on top of Cataloochee mountain, on another branch, also known as the Long branch. A little dog, stayed with the body and attracted the searchers to it by getting on a foot-log and howling.
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